Gmail’s New Tabs – “Much Ado About Nothing” for Email Marketing

After the initial panic subsided and everyone sat back and took a moment to regroup, they realized the new Gmail Tabs email filtering system doesn’t look like it’s going to negatively affect legitimate email newsletter marketers. The news is even better for those using best practices – consistently delivering relevant content to their target market, receiving steady opt-ins, few complaints and low bounce rates.

Currently, according to email marketing testing service Litmus, Gmail received approximately 4 percent of the 250 million emails opened in June 2013, which placed them at No. 8 in the field of email clients.

First and foremost!

All reports from industry professionals and the top email marketing software providers say that there has been no measureable negative impact so far. by following the advice below, no one should have to worry about the future of their email newsletter marketing plan.

Subject line to sender line switcheroo.

We’ve done our share of preaching about your subject lines. And they are still important. However, with the new Gmail tabs, only the sender name will be displayed when the tab is inactive. The best advice regarding this turn of events is to make your sender name short and highly recognizable. Overly long sender names, or a slew of emails hitting that tab all at once, will truncate sender names, masking identity. Just be clear about who the message is from, and users will click, see the subject line, and —best case — open your email.

Nothing has changed — monitor your own statistics regularly.

We do a pretty good job of keeping our clients up to date on global trends that could have any effect on their campaigns, positive or negative. It’s always good to know what is going on outside of our own sphere of influence, but the real key is to monitor your email client reports and adjust accordingly. So, you may want to keep a more focused eye, at least for a while, on your subscribers using Gmail so you can see if there are changes occurring that you should be concerned about.

Ask your subscribers to “star” your messages now.

You don’t have to wait — you can be proactive by including a call to action in your next scheduled email newsletter edition, somewhere near the top, that asks subscribers using Gmail to click the star located to the left of the sender line. Some email marketers — especially social and political action groups — are already doing this. You also can go a step further and explain to your subscribers that they can do this with all messages they want to display in their Primary section if they have switched to the new tab system.

Or you could do nothing.

If open rates are good, if you get good conversion rates and have been doing this for a while, your messages should be considered items of interest even without any user intervention. Gmail touts this new system as one that “learns” user preferences. In these cases, faithful readers won’t have to do anything to have your messages delivered seamlessly under their Primary tab.

Tabs could reduce competition.

Think about it this way: when your messages are competing for attention with personal notes, social media notifications, and scores of other messages, there’s a chance your email will be overlooked. Tabs are designed to update the number of messages in each, so when a subscriber clicks the Promotions tab, there you are! And when users click that tab, they are usually ready to shop!

Welcome messages are still relevant and a perfect way to turn leads into sales.

Use your autoresponders to their fullest extent, and make sure that all new opt-in subscribers immediately receive a well-written and well-constructed introduction to what they can expect from each edition of your newsletter. A special offer can’t be emphasized enough at this juncture, either. People are most interested and are more likely to respond in a positive way the sooner you communicate with them.

Bottom line: Gmail is popular, but it is not the only email client.

Gmail is a popular email client, but the No. 1 and No. 3 most popular email clients are on “Apple iOS (iPhone as 23 percent of all opens and iPad as 12 percent,” according to Litmus. And as long as you stick to the proven fundamentals of email marketing, you will still be reaping the rewards for a long time.

Article Info

Sep 05, 2013Written by Nathan Cavicchi, who has written 113 articles for the iContact Blog.